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Friday, November 6, 2009

Friday, November 6, 2009

Poor Big Bird. He's a beloved childhood icon, he's turning 40 next week, and he gets no respect in the baking world.

It's one thing to rip the poor guy's beak off, but then to sign your name (illegibly) in its place? For shame, Halko! Or maybe Nillo...Mouo? Dang, this Wreckerator must have written code for the NSA in a former life; I have no idea what that says.

Guys, it's a sad, sad day on Cake Wrecks when a dreaded CCC is the "best" of the bunch:

It's obvious by this post, Jen, that beaks are tremendous challenges to cake decorators. I mean, REALLY? A carrot and a gray strung-out blob? A garbled name? I love Big Bird and I am saddened deeply by the wreckiness. And then I laugh...

Alright, that does it!!! They crossed the line! These nitwits have butchered and mutilated the Holy Grail of my childhood! It's time to arrange for a lynching.

I'm 34 years old, grew up on Sesame Street, and got next week's TV Guide in the mailbox the other day. I couldn't help but smile at the Sesame Street cast on the cover and race home to read the article. It brought back wonderful memories.

Actually, I thought the last one looked more like a cross between Big Bird and Snuffaluffagus...I always wondered about those two!I think we need to start a "Just Say No" campaign for wrecorators. They seem to be in bad shape lately!

Here's what I think happened with the third one. It was meant to be an Elmo cake, but someone called for a Big Bird cake. So they said, well crap, we don't know how to make one of those. I know! Just color the Elmo cake cream and add a beak. Voila! Massive Fail.

Perhaps Big Bird wandered too close to a poultry farm, where I understand beak removal is often a common practice... No wait! I see that Elmo has it! In that case, a message to you, Elmo: any self-respecting bird's mouth is found INSIDE its beak. Think on that next time you try to sport this look.

I can't help it, I laughed the hardest at "I always wondered what would happen if..."-Hilarious. Poor Big Bird, he was my favorite as a child too, I made my poor Great Aunt carry my great big stuff Big Bird all over "the loop" (downtown chicago) when we went to see Santa and eat at Fields when I was 3.-Yes, she still complains.

the "blonde elmo" cake looks like they had a smiley face cake laying around then someone mentioned sesame streets anniversary and they were like "hey lets throw a beak on here" .. "tadaa! big bird! check em' out!" thats horrible. secondly- yes banana seat bikes used to be the shizzzz... my cousins and i used to fight over my grandmas banana seat bike when i was little. hahathanks for the actual photo of bigbird- cuz i cant figure out for the life of me what that blue crap on his face is on the first cake. theres no beak? .. im confused.

How difficult can it be to butcher Sesame Street cakes? A bakery I used to visit always had Elmo and Cookie Monster cookies for sale (which were delicious), and they were very simply made. However, you actually could tell which character they were supposed to resemble!

Mike McCarey, whom I consider to be the GOD OF CAKES, made the Big Bird cake on Challenge. He used a heat gun to make modelling chocolate look fluffy. Un-frickin-believable.

Here's his website (warning, it has music set to default on, but can be turned off): http://www.mikesamazingcakes.com/

I just signed up for his showcase demo at the Austin cake show (http://thattakesthecake.org/) in February and I'm positively giddy to see him in real life. He's even going to be teaching classes before the show, including one on modeling chocolate techniques, but I'll be too busy making my entry that he and some other awesome folks will be judging...meep, I have to work extra hard when the GOD is coming to see our work!

My son was looking at these with me...when we came to the "Blonde Elmo" - unprompted he goes "there's a yellow Elmo!" Then when we got to the grouch and Big Bird love child he says "It looks like Grouch!" So, whether we adults like the integrity of the cakes or not at least 5 year olds get it. ;-)

Oh, man, that last one is a classic. With the Bigbird-Elmo one, I thought it was Big Bird wearing a black fanny pack for a moment. And the one with the popsicle nose looks wrong, but I bet that pretzel tastes delicious.

Honestly Jen, I didn't think you were old enough to remember banana seats. I used to have a cool purple sparkle seat. Also the matching streamers in the handlebars...I had to laugh @ Natalie's comment about Big Bird 'getting no respect.'

Incidentally, I didn't realize Big Bird wasn't a girl until about halfway through elementary school. And then came the thoughts of "Why bother giving them genders in the first place, since they're just puppets." Ah, childhood.

Carly said... Elmo and Cookie were on the today show; they had a cake. It's fine I suppose, but it's really BORING. ________________________Sesame celebrating 40 yrs and they have elmo and abby on the show. ( Yes cookie was there too)

Elmo was there from only the 1980s (?) and Abby is a very recent new character.

Blonde Elmo looks like the icing bag erupted on his face. That can't qualify as a beak, can it? And it looks like his mouth and eyes are plastic flotsam! ya think they'd have a plastic beak, too. Maybe it was en Elmo kit modified for Big Bird. I wonder what they'd do to Snuffaluffagus. They would have been better off doing a beak/nose/trunk-less Cookie Monster.

That last one looks like an angry pine cone with heavy blue eyeshadow...or a pineapple ticked his greenery got cut off. Little Mr. candy cane legs with talons...

Having seen the truly amazing Big Bird cake that Mike McCarey (of the appropriately named "Mike's Amazing Cakes") made on food network's "challenge" only makes these wrecks all the more wreck-y. That yellow Elmo cake also only furthers my belief that there should be some kind of test before bakers are allowed to buy cake kits.

My 3 year old saw the first 2 and excitedly said, "Mom, it's Sponge Bob Square Dance!" I told her it was supposed to be Big Bird and she just shook her head.My 6 year old said that the 3rd one is Elmo, but I think the plastic mouth looks like Cookie Monster's.

I had to come back to this post to let you know that when I had my 4-year-old daughter in the cake supply shop the other day, she saw bags of the Elmo faces on the wall and immediately knew that it was Elmo.

Let me make this very clear: she saw just the plastic bits of the eyes/nose and the mouth with no red icing or other identifying marks, and in fact they were all sideways in the baggies, and she knew it was Elmo.

So wtf was the decorator smoking when they thought an Elmo face could pass for Big Bird? PUT THE GUMPASTE CRACKPIPE DOWN!

wv: potins

As in, when you smoke tins of fondant instead of pot and get so wrongly baked that you think Elmo looks like Big Bird.

Oh man! These parents that lovingly tried to make these cakes for their children are such idiots for failing so miserably! Why didn't they just pay some superstar cakemaker an exorbitant amount of money to do it? Geeze -- if you can't do something better for your spoiled two-year old who doesn't know the difference anyway, then why even bother trying to show your love? I mean, don't these people who tried to make someone else happy (but failed miserably, obviously) know that their neighbors, friends, and families are laughing at their earnest efforts? And don't they know that they should have been trying to impress their peers rather than make their child happy?Some parents...really.

The cakes on Cake Wrecks are all made by professional cake decorators. We try very hard to never post a picture that was done by a non professional as that wouldn't be fair. If you know that one of the cakes in this post wasn't made by a professional or a bakery, please let us know so we can remove it.

Just so we're clear, no one is making fun of mothers making cakes for their kids. If, however, one does this for a living and still manages to churn out these poorly made confections, then we believe their creations are fair game.

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